Archive for June, 2013

I’ve mentioned this before, but in case you forgot, today is Bloomsday. You remember, right? It marks the life and career of James Joyce. Why the 16th? Well, Joyce chose the sixteenth of June to be that of the perambulation of the chief protagonist of his groundbreaking novel Ulysses. Now, mining way down, to the bottom, why June sixteenth? If you’ve forgotten, I’m glad you’ve been curious enough to read this far. That had been the date of his first outing with wife to be Nora Barnacle.

They had children and Joyce said that children should be raised by love which is convenient because this particular June 16th is also Father’s Day. Joyce would agree with Swiss child psychologist Alice Miller who looked at child rearing from the opposite perspective. She wrote that the most pervasive and pernicious crime in modern society is child abuse which is at root of all evil in our world. Her biographical analysis of Hitler serves her point well.

I have been fortunate enough to have had both a great dad from whom I solicited advice for the last time the day before he died in 2007 and a great father- in-law (who died just a few months back) to whom I posed a big question nearly thirty six years ago. The former’s words helped prevent me from electrocuting myself that day and the latter gave his assent to something incredible. I miss both dearly and think of them every day. I think they’d agree that men don’t really ‘get’ kids until they have one of their own and know that they would with the Navajo who “think that a baby is fully human when it laughs for the first time*”.

Father to the Man by Tom C Hunley

The OBGYN said babies almost neverarrive right on their due dates, sothe night before my firstborn was dueto make his debut, I went out with the guysuntil a guilt-twinge convinced me to convince themto leave the sports bar and watch game sixon my 20-inch rabbit eared, crap TV. After wearrived, my wife whispered, “My water broke”as the guys cheered and spilled potato chipsfor our little dog to eat up. I can’t rememberwho was playing whom, but someone got called for a technical, as the crowd made a noisethat could have been a quick wind, high-fivingleaf after leaf after leaf. I grabbed our suitcaseand told the guys they could stay put, but wewere heading for the hospital and the rest ofour lives. No, we’re out of here, they said.Part of me wanted to head out with them,back to the smell of hot wings and microbrews,then maybe to a night club full of heavy bassand perfume, or just into a beater Ford with a fullash tray, speeding farther and farther intothe night, into nowhere in particular. Instead I walkedmy wife to our minivan, held her hand as shestepped down from the curb, opened her door,shut the suitcases into the trunk, and ran right over that part of me, left itbleeding and limping like a poor stupid squirrel.

*Thanks to Dr Brother for fixing me up with this bit from the 12/20/09 NYT Mag. You would not believe the size of my clippings file.

On the way to Acadia National Park recently, for another wonderful Artist in Residency, roommate tired of my line of BS and honestly actually told me to go to hell. Taken somewhat aback, my little black angel Nellie and I went for a walk in search of exercise and relief while my mind drifted (for the umpteenth time) to thoughts of redemption. And if you follow this space at all you will know that when I saw the sign above thoughts arose related to synchronicity and hope.

Expecting an assortment of other untethered souls, I soon found that all throughout Maine “Redemption” indicates a venue at which empty bottles can be exchanged for dirty coins. Oh well, we headed back to the artist supply store where our truck was being laden, working up our best sorrowful eye routine. Our artist rolled hers. Best case scenario.

Making our way north we stopped at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art to see a remarkable show of pictures and sculptures by “Scandinavia’s most famous living artist” Per Kirkeby. The Dane’s words greatly informed the experience. “The point at which art is found is the point where what is intriguing is dangerous.” I totally buy that. In every regard. Art, on an easel or in a life, will not be found – or made – very far from the edge.

“Where is the border between one and the other way to organize matter? For a brief moment I saw geology as a worldview… A huge stream of energy and materials, which now and then converge in crystalline structures, a mountain, a church, a brief moment, a breath, a morning mist over the ever-flowing river. The mountain-building energies were no less cultural than the energies of the church-builders”.

Brilliant. Consciousness as a force of nature. Tectonic even. Those scientists in search of a grand unified theory should start with him. New Yorker critic Peter Schjeldahl wrote of Kirkeby’s work: it’s like being: “hit by an abrupt , mildly disorienting spell of self-consciousness, a kind of mental stumble: the Kirkeby effect”. See? Just like the slap upside the head with which I was graced by my artist as described above.

Below you see his “Fram”. It is at once “a poetic rendition of nature with a great force of color” and a demonstration of Kirkeby’s philosophy that: “A picture without intellectual superstructure is nothing”. He has said that Fram draws from Caspar David Friedrich’s Das Eismeer (The sea of ice) which you see at bottom. If you’re not familiar with the latter, make sure to notice the shards of a wrecked ship being crushed by the ice. Fram means forward and was the name of the vessel used by polar explorer Fridtjof Nansens between 1893 and 1912.

*Quotes, photos, and information from the exhibition catalogue: Per Kirkeby Paintings and Sculpture, Kosinski and Ottmann, Yale, 2012. The show originated at the Phillips Collection and the only other venue was Bowdoin. There through Bastille Day